


Dreams of Home

by danceswithhamsters01



Series: Reddit Prompts 2: Because the old one is quite full [19]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Bittersweet, Childhood Memories, Dreams, F/M, Fade Dreams, Gen, Home, Post-Dragon Age II, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28251837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithhamsters01/pseuds/danceswithhamsters01
Summary: Based on a prompt from r/dragonage.Prompt 3: Your OC revisits a childhood home in the Fade and remembers something unpleasant or bittersweet that they had long forgotten about someone in their family.Takes place shortly after the end of Act 3. Melodea Hawke and her new husband, Sebastian Vael, need to flee Kirkwall. She has a bittersweet dream during her last night in the Amell estate.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Sebastian Vael
Series: Reddit Prompts 2: Because the old one is quite full [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918846
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Dreams of Home

“Melodea! Melodea, where are you?” the voice called out from a distance.

Her eyes snapped open. She took in her surroundings, her mind slowly filling with both bewilderment and shock. She found herself nestled in a small gap between several dozen very large blueberry bushes. It was a familiar sight: a favorite hideaway to read in peace or attempt to sneak out of chores. They were less than half a mile from the little farm they called home. _How did I get here? I haven’t been here in years._

“Melodea!” The voice was feminine – possibly a girl no more than 10 years old – and drawing closer. “Mum said that it was your turn to help her with supper tonight!”

Longing and grief sank its teeth into her heart. _It couldn’t be. Could it?_

“There you are!” the voice’s owner crowed several moments later, bursting forth out of a bush. A girl with dark chocolate hair and warm brown eyes approached. “Carver said you were out looking for more berries. But I knew you’d come out here and steal a nap. I was right.”

Melodea was paralyzed in place by the dueling urges to sob or fly up and wrap her in a hug. _It can’t be. She’s dead. I saw her--_

Bethany put a hand on her hips. “Well, are you coming, sister? If we wait much longer, I’m pretty sure Carver will eat all of the berries and then we’ll have nothing to make pie with!”

She managed to keep the trembling out of her voice as she replied. “Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”

Bethany smiled and tried to pull her older sister up by a hand. The elder sister was caught by surprise when she noticed a lack of a wedding band on said hand. Worry nibbled at the back of her mind. She rarely took her ring off; it was a bit of Sebastian that she could always keep with her even when he was away tending to his duties. A brief glance downward revealed that the elder Hawke sister was also in a blue and white gingham dress. The accompanying apron that’d seen better days, judging by the purple spots undoubtedly made by berry juice. Mother had stopped buying gingham fabric the same year Father had died.

She followed behind Bethany out of a lack of anything better to do. _I must be in the Fade,_ she mused. _If I find any unwanted guests, I’m going to scream. And then set them on fire._ _But first, let’s see what there is to see, yes?_

The pair passed a fenced in field that was green with recently sprouted oats with a few chickens out lazily looking for something edible or interesting. At the end of the field, they found a stone path that led to a little farmhouse, sporting a recently refreshed coat of rusty red paint. Father had taken pride in keeping the house looking nice. “A man’s home is his castle,” as he would often say while studiously making repairs to it. He and Mother had built the dwelling with their own hands, along with help from friends in the nearby village of Lothering. The farmhouse had been the first proper home she remembered.

In the time before coming to Lothering, her family had rented little spaces in towns when times were good. When times were bad -- usually when Malcolm needed to keep both himself and his daughters hidden from templars and their sympathizers -- they would squat in abandoned buildings in places that most ignored. Sometimes, those places took the form of a halfway fallen barn. Other times, it was in a cave or tents pitched out in the wilderness. Mother had to explain that the tears she shed after the house was completed were of the happy variety. Father had promised them that they’d never need to run away ever again. Melodea had finally believed his words a few days after spending more than a year in one place.

The sisters entered the house. The scent of bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling to dry tickled her nose. Mother and Bethany had always enjoyed growing herbs, no matter if they had a proper garden for it or only a pair of window boxes. Crackling from the cooking fire drifted in from the kitchen. Nearby, Father and Carver were seated at the dining table; the elder reading from a well-worn book while the younger carefully dipped a quill in his inkwell and wrote. The boy stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on forming his letters. A ghost of a smile made her lip twitch. The other corner of Carver’s mouth had a telltale purple stain, no doubt a result of helping himself to the blueberries gathered earlier. Melodea stood there for a moment, remembering how Carver always seemed so happy when Father would spend time with him, even if it was while doing chores. _He always got the short end of the stick because Father spent so much time training me and Bethany…_

“There you are!” Mother declared, one hand on her hip and the other gripping a wooden spoon. “Are you quite done lollygagging? I promised the twins a pie as dessert and I don’t intend to go back on my word, dear girl.”

Melodea took the offered rolling pin without a word. Mother had always tried her best to say what she meant and to not idly make a promise, big or small. Even if this was a dream, she wouldn’t be the one to earn that disappointed look from Mother that always made her feel guilty. She rolled the dough flat, carefully laid it into the pie dish, and trimmed the edges. Mother, or the spirit wearing her likeness, spooned the berry mixture into the waiting crust. After that, the pair took to making lattice with the remaining dough.

_But you did disappoint her, didn’t you?_ A voice inside the mage’s mind stated.

_Don’t you have some other dreams to haunt, spirit? Let me make pie with my mother in peace,_ she thought back with a glare while cutting a bit of dough into strips.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, darling,” her not-mother cooed before sliding the dish into the brick oven that claimed a corner of the kitchen.

_First, it was your sister,_ the voice replied. The memory of Bethany being grabbed by that ogre during their desperate flight from the blight flashed in her mind. _And then it was your brother._ The memory of a pale, sickly, and weak Carver being hauled away by Ser Stroud’s people in the Deep Roads came to the front of her mind’s eye. Next came her mother’s heartbroken sobbing and her uncle’s rare expression of sadness when she broke the news to them of what happened to her brother during that expedition.

_Those were not my fault,_ she thought back at the voice in her head.

_You’ve always been nothing but a disappointment,_ the voice replied. As if to further make its point, a specific memory flashed before her eyes. She, Carver, Sebastian, and Merrill were in the ancient Grey Warden prison in the Vimmark mountains. They’d dispatched the last of the demons that were sealed away when an apparition began speaking with her father’s voice.

_“_ _I’ve bought our freedom Leandra. We can go home now, us and the baby. We’ll be together. I hope it takes after you, love. I would wish this magic on no one. May they never learn what I’ve done here.”_

Along with the pang that came with hearing her deceased father’s voice came a different sort of pain. His tears and apologies on that fateful day when he discovered her using magic for the first time had finally made sense with all of the subtlety of a brick to the face. She’d been a disappointment, after all. The version of her in the memory dropped to her knees and sobbed quietly. Sebastian was quick to pull her into his arms and murmur something in her ear.

_I’ve seen enough. I don’t have to stick around for this, spirit. Find someone else to bother,_ Melodea thought with a glare.

“Darling, are you quite alright?” her not-mother asked.

“I have to go. Excuse me,” she said as she made for the door.

“But what about supper?” the spirit wearing her mother’s face called out.

After slamming the door as she stepped ‘outside,’ her eyes flew open. Instead of the open skies around Lothering, she saw the familiar red and yellow pattern of her bed’s canopy. Whispers of dawn light drifted in from the window. She sat up and took the sight in. She was back in her bedchambers, in her family’s estate. _Back in the waking world. Thank the Maker._ A soft brogue heavy with sleep pulled her from her musings.

“Mm, is it morning already, love?” he asked as he lifted his head from his pillow.

The sight of Sebastian in a rumpled sleep coat brought a smile to her face. “I’m afraid so,” she replied with a chuckle.

He sat up and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. “Best we get started with the day, then. We’ve got a journey to pack for.”

She replied with a nod and kiss to his forehead. It wasn’t safe in Kirkwall for them any longer. Word had reached her that Varric was “distracting” one of the Divine’s ‘Hands.’ She and Sebastian would need to leave, preferably before sunset that day. Melodea hauled herself out of bed with a heavy sigh. Perhaps once they reached Starkhaven, they wouldn’t need to run away anymore. She was tired of running, even if she’d always been rather good at it.


End file.
